My bet is that the only reason to have "harfoots" is avoiding to pay for the use of the copyrighted word "hobbits" in the near future.
It sounds like a fart. Definitely lacking the talent of Tolkien to find the surgically precise word for each term, but I can understand the legal aspects of the need-for-control part.
I thought it was interesting from a linguistic perspective. These events are 3000-6000 years earlier than those of the Lord of the Rings. The languages would have changed in all that time. I spent time wondering how Harfoot might have evolved into Hobbit or how Hobbit might have arisen and replaced Harfoot.
If you want to hear some strange sounding names, you can look up the actual Westron names of the hobbits - Frodo Baggins and the other Shire names being an "English translation" from the Red Book of Westmarch. Sam's name is actually "Banazîr Galbasi", so maybe he's Turkish.
It sounds like a fart. Definitely lacking the talent of Tolkien to find the surgically precise word for each term, but I can understand the legal aspects of the need-for-control part.